Henry stayed silent, blinking at how easy it had been.
He called in a firearms officer to handle the weapons and disarm them as necessary, then after a full search of the Shogun which revealed nothing else, the guns were booked into the property store and locked in a safe.
DI Gallagher and DS Tattersall arrived at the station as Henry was about to have an initial interview with Anderson.
‘ Well done, you two,’ Gallagher said to them. ‘We need to thoroughly debrief what went on and, of course, go through the post-incident procedures for firearms incidents and consider counselling where necessary.’
He looked knowingly at Henry here, who, following a previous firearms incident had suffered a nervous breakdown caused by post-traumatic stress. Henry was fine at the moment but he knew these things had a habit of creeping up on people and addling their brains when they least expected it. He thought that Siobhan might benefit from counselling, although he didn’t suggest it. The choice rested with the individual.
‘ What you need to do now is get your statement done,’ Gallagher told him.
‘ We were going to chat to him now,’ Henry said.
Gallagher shook his head. ‘Bad practice. Me and Jim’ll do that. We’ve been involved from day one. It’s our pigeon.’
‘ It should be down to us,’ Henry persisted.
‘ No — and that’s final. You’ve done a good job, now leave it be and let someone else take it over.’
Henry’s nostrils flared. He was getting angry. He put a lid on it and nodded. ‘Did the other targets get arrested?’
‘ Two locked up, one still outstanding. They are in custody in Blackpool. We intend to interview Anderson up here though, then take him to Blackpool. They’ll be in court on Monday morning. Look, you’ve both done a superb job today,’ Gallagher concluded. ‘Get the paperwork done, then go home, relax, do whatever you fancy. Enjoy yourselves.’
The men’s clothing department in Debenhams, Preston, is in the basement. There was a vast array of clothes to choose from. Mind-boggling, really.
Munrow’s mind was totally boggled. He had already been treated to about six hundred pounds’ worth of gear from other shops in Preston and was therefore loaded with bags crammed to bursting with shirts, ties, trousers, jeans, shoes and chic sporting gear, and was frankly completely pissed-off. He stuck with it because he had not yet induced the woman to make that cash withdrawal he so desperately wanted. When she did and the money was in his fist, the shopping would come to an abrupt end.
He took a glance at his watch. Almost four. He groaned angrily. ‘We’ve missed the banks.’
She gave him a patronising look. ‘No, we haven’t, sweetie.’
‘ But they close at half-past three!’
‘ You have been away a long time,’ she chided him gently. ‘Five o’clock now, mostly.’ She took a breath and her eyes flickered a once-over. ‘You really need a suit.’
They browsed through the tailoring department, Munrow glumly at her heels. His body language mirrored his state of mind. Fed up with shopping, impatient for her to get her money out. Shoulders slumped. Dragging his feet. Stifling yawns between scowling at her back. He was like a husband being hauled around. He also felt ludicrously out of place.
‘ I’d really like you to get some bespoke tailoring,’ he heard her saying ahead of him. ‘Fit you out in a really nice, made-to-measure suit. But that’ll have to wait. For now, how about a couple off the peg?’
She stopped, turned unexpectedly, a broad smile of pleasure on her lovely lips. Her indulgence was making her extremely happy and at the moment she did not care who knew about it, or saw them. Even her husband.
Munrow thought he had changed his expression in time, but he was wrong.
‘ You’re tired, aren’t you, lovey?’ she said sympathetically, misreading the signs. ‘This is the last stop, promise. Then we’ll book into the Post House and have a fashion show. And then we shall fuck.’ She said those last five words in a dark, husky whisper. ‘How about that?’
‘ Sounds good’
‘ Now, what about this one?’ She unhooked a suit off the rail and held it up against him.
They finished the reports in about an hour, sitting in the CID office in Lancaster.
It was four o’clock. Henry was having trouble keeping awake. The week had shattered him anyway, but now his sore body and soul was the icing on the cake.
He yawned and slouched back in the chair, glancing very quickly through the statement he’d concocted.
‘ You look whacked, Henry,’ Siobhan said softly. She was sitting on the other side of the desk, gazing at him.
‘ I admit it. Been a long week.’
Yes, it had.
Beginning with kneeing Shane Mulcahy in the nuts last Saturday evening and ending here, almost a full week later, having been shot. And in between, what had there been? The murders in the newsagents. The dead girl on the beach. Boris the gorilla — Christ, he’d forgotten about the gorilla. The chase with Dundaven after Nina had been shot (Christ, he’d almost forgotten about her too). McNamara. Degsy dying. Long hours. Meeting John Rider for the first time. Virtually no sleep. Dead cops, injured primates. Gun finds and fights. Helicopters. Arguments with Kate. The NWOCS. Being teamed up with Siobhan Robson. That kiss… which seemed to make it all worthwhile.
Henry’s back was to the door. Siobhan looked past him and nodded at someone entering the office.
It was Gallagher, having completed the first interview with Anderson, who was being represented by a duty solicitor. Not surprisingly he’d said nothing. The interview sessions with him were going to be long and drawn-out, like pulling teeth, only much more painful. Henry was glad now that it was someone else’s problem. He enjoyed interviewing suspects but all his energy had drained out.
Gallagher told them how difficult Anderson was being, but he wasn’t worried. ‘He’ll be well stitched-up by the time we’ve finished,’ he said. It transpired that a search of Anderson’s flat had produced a Dolce amp; Gabbana T-shirt, a pair of two-tone shoes and a white pork-pie hat. Exactly the gear the gang had been wearing on the robberies.
The term ‘stitched-up’ left Henry somewhat cold. It had ominous overtones and wasn’t a world away from ‘fitting-up’. Falsifying evidence and other such illegal practices was a road that Henry would never go down. He believed it was his job to find evidence, root it out, even if the way he found it was occasionally off-centre. He had never resorted to anything underhand. He was just too straight.
Maybe ‘stitched-up’ was simply one of Gallagher’s favoured phrases and meant nothing. Henry let it pass. It would soon come back to haunt him.
‘ Right, Henry, time to go home now,’ said Gallagher. He swapped a quick glance with Siobhan which Henry caught but did not comprehend. A furrowed brow, a questioning look, a brief nod to each other, then the DI said, ‘Oh, I forgot. That surveillance van needs to go back to Blackburn. Siobhan, do you mind? Henry — sorry, pal. The other team’ll need it tonight. Pick up one of the other cars to get you home.’
‘ Sure, boss,’ she said.
‘ Henry?’
‘ No problem,’ he said wearily. However, the prospect of a trip all the way to Blackburn before heading home to Blackpool was fairly daunting. It would add at least ninety minutes to the journey time — on a good day — and this was a Friday, rush hour. Yuk! He was beginning to need his bed desperately.
‘ I like that one, I really do,’ she said admiringly, a thoughtful finger on her chin, pretty head tilted to one side. ‘It makes you look sexy.’
Munrow said, ‘Good, let’s get it.’
It was a nice suit and fitted him perfectly. He liked it. At two hundred quid, he loved it.
‘ Yes, let’s,’ she said gleefully, but grabbed another one from the display, ‘and try this one too. It’s lovely.’